What Was That

Four years is a long time in music. Lorde's last album, Solar Power, arrived in 2021 to a muted reception. Too gentle, too sun-dazed, too far from the sharp-edged teenager who had rewritten what a pop star could be. The years that followed were quiet. Then, in April 2025, she texted her fans and told them to come to Washington Square Park.

The event was shut down by the NYPD before it started. No permits, too many people. But Lorde showed up anyway, her collaborator playing the unreleased track on a portable speaker to whoever had gathered. The song had already been leaking in fragments on TikTok for weeks. By the time "What Was That" was officially released, the anticipation was almost unbearable.

The song itself earned it. A synth-pop and electropop track with a drum pattern inspired by Radiohead's "Reckoner," it was the sound of someone who had been through something and come out the other side ready to move. On her website, Lorde described writing it during a "deep breakup" in late 2023, recording what fell out of her mouth during grief's vortex.

It hit #1 in New Zealand immediately, charted across Australia, the UK, and the Billboard Global 200, and was included in Rolling Stone's best songs of 2025. After four years of silence, it announced a return that felt genuinely earned.